


The Poet's Eyes

by SycoraxSebastian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Draco is a Poet, HP: EWE, M/M, Non-Graphic mention of attempted suicide, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3864832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SycoraxSebastian/pseuds/SycoraxSebastian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lost himself in war, and found himself in words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Poet's Eyes

Draco was never one for poetry. And then he met Potter.

He never allowed himself to relax long enough to focus on how words sound, and what color thread to use to stitch them together. There was no time for such frivolity- poetry and magic did not mingle, and nor did boys like Potter and boys like Draco.

Draco never had cause to write poetry until he met Potter. The first time they met, he didn't count as an introduction. That was a fluke, a diverging of two paths, they weren't seeing each other since they were too busy looking away. Potter was always an obstacle, a tripping point in Draco's way to greatness, not really a person- it was easier to pretend the other boy was just a thing when Draco was helping to plan his murder. 

There is no poetry or beauty in death, in cold blooded murder, no matter how many times poets try to write it that way. Draco wasn't able to open his eyes to the stanzas swirling in the air around him until his retinas were burned clean by a flash of green light and the consequences of blind adoration. He was shaken, then, as he watched the results of his first foray into adulthood crumble and flame around him. At age 16 he had his first real taste of responsibility and it was the bitter copper tang of a bitten tongue.

Draco shut himself off, then. Being open to other people meant feeling, and feeling meant thinking and it hurt too much to think of what he had done, what he had caused. He built even higher walls with deeper foundations after Dumbledore died and even Lord Voldemort remarked on how well guarded he was. The pride in his voice made Draco sick to his stomach- he was only saved from betraying himself by the very wards Voldemort was so impressed by. He vowed to reach out again- no, not again, but for the first time- after the war, if he didn’t die. 

After the war, he tried to start over, to pick up his scattered, broken pieces and make something new, but he had dug himself so deeply into the well inside his heart it seemed impossible to escape. It didn't help that no one he encountered was able to look past the sign of death on his arm and the crimes of his family piled at his feet. No one stayed long enough to look him in the eye and see his remorse. It wouldn't have been hard, he wore his regret tattooed across his face, but people saw what they wanted to and it was easier to hate him for what he had been than to admit that people change and forgiveness is a possibility. 

He was ready to give up, that awful, awful day when he found himself on the London Bridge, looking at all the insignificant Muggles and envying them their simple lives, knowing he was better off trying to become part of the water below him than trying to reach out only to be met with the same sneers he used to rely on. He stood on the edge for a long time. He was passed by many times, ignored or forgotten for the benefit of many a guilty conscience. Just as he was closing his eyes, bidding the world food bye, a hand closed on his arm.

The teenage girl who saved him told him she had been about to jump, too, but he didn't want to see him throw his life away- they both woke up that day. She gave Draco her suicide note, telling him that if he had it, she wouldn't be tempted again, at least not any time soon.

Her note was simple and it struck Draco in a profound and painful way that made him realize the numbness was gone because he hadn't felt so broken since he watched Dumbledore fall back off of the Astronomy Tower. "I've gone to stand with the poets now." Draco went home and wrote a poem for the Muggle girl who looked at him and saw a fellow lost soul, not a villain to be hated and ostracized. The words were clumsy flowing out of his quill but he had never felt so clean. He wrote without punctuation or rules or care or respect for propriety and he cried at how light his shoulders felt, after that fraction of the weight had lifted. He had buried so much that he had never acknowledged that it was alright to be affected by the war. He hadn't been aware that he had been carrying so many secrets until he spilled them onto the paper and watched the scars over his heart begin to fade.

That year, he went to the Ministry Ball (he did work for the Aurors as a consultant on Death Eater cases, no one trusted him and he was regarded with disgust, but at least he was contributing something), which he had never been to before. People seemed to look at him a bit differently then, and at first he thought it was because they were judging him for his suicide attempt, but he had made sure nothing about that got out. The change in people's gazes was due to the fact that Draco had begun to look at himself as a human being worth caring about. His coworkers had been looking past him for so long, but then again, so had he. 

Draco had suavely dropped his drink in surprise when he looked up at Potter, who had approached his lonely table with a bizarre hope in his emerald eyes. Draco’s glass shattered from the shock of seeing the Savior of the Wizarding World sitting down at his table as if he mattered, too. Draco had hurriedly apologized for splashing alcohol on Potter and the other man had laughed with an adorable awkwardness that sparked something in Draco's heart, something he'd never felt before.

Somehow, he and Potter spent the rest of the Ball talking, all past animosity forgiven in light of new attraction- for that was what it was, at least for Draco. He saw the indicators of a change in attitude in Potter, too, in little self-deprecating giggles, sheepish smiles and a new openness most likely brought about by the flowing mead and Firewhiskey.

One thing lead to another, and they set up a time to get coffee (not a date, Draco assured Harry, just a reintroduction, a new beginning for new people). Coffee lead to dinner, dinner lead to more drinks which lead to an invitation to Potter’s home at Grimmauld Place which Draco was quick to take him up on. Something casually begun turned into a serious relationship, much to the bemused surprise of Harry's friends and Draco’s coworkers. 

Draco continued to write poetry, sonnets to Potter’s eyes, odes to his hands and an epic in honor of him. He recorded snatches of their conversations and spun them into tapestries of loving words, compiling a collection that he intended to give to Potter on their first anniversary. He had never shown this side of himself to anyone else- he was expected to be aloof and closed off, even now. There were some parts of his upbringing that he couldn’t shake. A Malfoy did not dabble in poetry, nor did he write it for his lover. Especially if his lover was the Gryffindor Golden Boy.

He had left his school yard prejudices behind, on the day that his childhood fell off the Astronomy Tower, he had more important hatreds to nurture. He left those deeper hatreds behind on the day he realized he had fallen in love with Harry Potter. Draco had sought refuge in poetry- in ink stained words on a page without any magic, stark and intangible, but still very real- when all else had failed him. Magic was fickle, it lead people to violence and it taunted them with power beyond all price. It took him longer to find the cadence veiled within the subjects they were taught at Hogwarts, the gentle rhyme of the charms in Transfigurations, the harsh harmony of Dark magic in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He may have thrown out his instinctive mistrust of Gryffindors, but it took him far longer to reconcile his loathing of magic and all those who taught it- they had betrayed him and others, badly, fatally. Magic was supposed to make them better, it placed them above others and they had all sunk so far down. Magic had not helped him when he was at his lowest- he had instead been saved by a Muggle, a girl no older than Harry was the day he laid down his life to save everyone.

Draco found himself in the words he wrote for Harry. He fell a bit more in love with Potter every day, the better he got to know himself, the easier it was to give his heart away to the dark haired man who hid his beautiful eyes behind smudged glasses. Draco saw Harry’s soul when he took off his glasses (and he only did that for Draco), and Harry saw Draco soul in the poems he wrote for him (and he only showed those words to Harry). These private pieces of each other linked them together, and they lived a little bit in the other’s heart, kept immortal by love, which was far more effective than a Horcrux.

Draco had never imagined that he’d be one for poetry, but then again, he never imagined he’d be one for falling in love with Harry Potter.


End file.
